burning bridges

today a small handful of my drinking buddies ran the blackmores running festival's flagship event, the sunday telegraph body + soul bridge run [doesn't sponsorship make for un-succinct copy?]. in what became blistering conditions friends & flesh cats; ky, raen, & andrew with only extensive beer/wine/whisky arm training joined 33, 000 others & um, decided to subject our bodies to an altogether different kind of abuse. 9kms is an excellent cure-all hangover technique. i think it's called pain transference.

with firmly strapped feet, i joined them in the ultimate asthma attack impersonation to survive the completer finisher ranks on the harbour foreshore opposite the opera house after starting on the other side & running over the closed off sydney harbour bridge.

the crown in the jewel of the running races was the sydney marathon [42kms] which appeared to feature peeps of notably higher fitness calibre to ourselves with slightly more rounded training regimes. the marathon was taken out by winning kenyan runner julius seurei in a time of 2 hours, 17 minutes and seven seconds. that's um, 1km in 3.18 minutes... quite a lengthy sprint. as a reality check we ran 9kms in around an hour in a fast fashionably paced "yog", something between an uphill crawl/downhill jog [you saw it here first -- wait for it to go viral].

on completion, after subjecting the god-sent three minute angels to our toxic sweat [lucky them, apologies to your colleagues clare], & following the repeated beration by the woman in the corporate sunday tele tent who put seinfeld's soup nazi to shame taking pride of sausage sizzle catering to new hedonistic over-possesive heights: we did what had to be done when permanently denied the juice we desperately craved... we went & drank more beer. apparently there's a half marathon coming up. we do have our training to consider after all.

pix by punk monk michael prechtl

blister in the sun

when i sort of sauntered into the shower today after arriving home from running in the largest race in the world: sydney's sun-herald city2surf, i screamed for five minutes solid. water was as acid to my feet.

apologies for the grotesque, but i ran on a matching set of massive foot blisters for at least 12 of the 14kms. "fun run" was a concept stretch for awhile there, especially whilst darting amongst the minefield of wheeled baby-strollers & novelty dress-up animals from the very rear of the back pack. as i inexpertly zigged & zagged searching & failing to find my lost friend whilst negotiating a stomach-dragging gradient that went up forever, heartbreak hill may have slowed many to a paltry stagger but it literally stole my sole.

as i ran through the william street tunnel enroute to the infamous city to surf milestone which is the aforementioned hill, it was sad to see someone actually did succumb & had dropped with a heart attack only minutes into the race. medics & police formed a protective barrier around him as my yellow bib-clad packmates soberly power-walked past.

it wasn't enough to spoil what was a beautiful & epic sydney sunday morning. without training after only registering a couple of weeks prior in some unthought through manic makeover mode, i managed to not only survive & finish amongst 75 000 others, but did the whole thing without slowing to a walk. preparation food groups were mostly um, lots of alcohol.

i probably wouldn't recommend this to others. however after experiencing what we writers/alcoholics refer to as a moment of clarity [a 90 minute long one whilst running to bondi] approach exercise with renewed vigour & now will prepare for the pending sunday telegraph 9kms bridge run.

as a member of the corporate sunday tele team i might actually do a few runs prior to minimise visible thigh wobble [i heard it clashes with the uniform]. whether the diet is modified in sync with a bunch of other journos however remains to be seen.

some amazing shots of the day here courtesy of gary hayes' funky flickr blog.